A701 Pocket PC Phone Coming to Europe Soon: Q1 2006?

British online tabloid The Register scored some advanced pics of the Mio A701, a new Pocket PC that runs on Windows Mobile 5.0. Unfortunately, The Register was wrong about this phone when they announced its release in August 2005. They pretend now that the A701 is scheduled to ship mid-December, but a more reliable source, MS Mobile says that Mio Technology have denied it, and stated that it will be released in the first quarter of next year.

Anyway, here are some highlights about the A701 Pocket PC phone: it will have slightly different specifications than A700 (Chinese version that is already on sale in Asia) but these differences are not yet officially announced or known; built-in GPS and Bluetooth 1.2 (but no Wi-Fi); GSM/GPRS support (but no EDGE or UMTS). There's no keyboard - the device presents a virtual, on-screen pad; 2.7-inch LCD touch screen; a 1.3 megapixel camera, 192MB of memory and an SD expansion card slot; fast processor: 520 MHz.

Mio is pitching the A701 as a phone with PDA functionality, rather than the other way round.